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Boy Finds Diamond Worth $15,000 In The Grass At State Park

A boy who finds a diamond on a trip to a state park in Arkansas says it was a case of being in the right place at the right time.

Michael Dettlaff, a 12-year-old from North Carolina, was making a trip with his family to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. The park is the only diamond-producing site in the world that allows visitors to find and keep whatever diamonds they can get their hands on.

Michael and his family were only in the park for about 10 minutes when the boy found the diamond, which just happened to be standing out against the grass. Detlass told ABCNews.com that the rock looked very smooth and glassy.

Here’s the even more amazing part — after the boy finds the diamond, he has no idea what it is. He stuck it in a bag with other rocks, but when Michael opened it for an employee the man knew it was something special.

“When I brought this rock out of the bag the guy who’s there, he just went bug-eyed and he said, ‘Hang on a second. I need to take this to the back room,’ ” Michael Dettlaff told ABC. “So then people start coming from everywhere and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah. It’s a big diamond.’ ”

The park where the boy finds the diamond has an interesting history. The first diamond was found there in 1906, and over the following decades it changed hands many times and there were several attempts to turn it into a commercial mining venture. But after a number of those businesses failed, the state of Arkansas bought the land to develop it as a state park.

There have been other big finds at Crater of Diamonds State Park in the past, including a 40-carat diamond found in 1924. Michael’s diamond, which he named “God’s Glory Diamond,” was 5.16 carats.

The boy who finds the diamond now has a chance to get rich off of it. Experts say once it’s cut and polished the rock will be worth close to $15,000.